LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf......'....... 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



JUM XI 



Evolution > Christianity 



A STUDY 



BY 



y. C. F. GRUMBINE 




CHICAGO 
CHARLES H KERR & COMPANY 
175 Dearborn Street 
1887 




Copyright, 1887 
By Charles H. Kerr & Company 



CONTENTS 

Preface, 

Evolution, 

Christianity, . 

Evolution and Christianity 
Compared, 

Conclusion, 



PREFACE 

THE attempt has been made in this book 
to examine the relation of Christianity to 
Evolution — not simply to re-direct the 
thought of man to the origin, growth and 
progress of natural religion, but more espe- 
cially to show that "nature is the sum of the 
manifestations of the will of God," and that 
from time immemorial there has been a 
steady and natural unfolding of the moral 
sentiment, seen in all species of morals and 
religion. I have purposely evaded all ques- 
tions which may involve metaphysical sub- 
tlety and sophistry, and endeavored to touch 
upon only those relative points which force 
themselves upon me by their importance. 
I have aimed to know not what God could 

or would do, but rather what He has done 
(5) 



6 



PREFACE 



and is doing. It must be confessed that the 
gauntlet is thrown down to all forms of su- 
pernaturalism which trespass upon the uni- 
formity of the order of natural law and 
causation. Christianity is found to be the 
most exact contribution to the unfolding of 
natural religion. 

The hope is expressed that the book, which 
aims to be suggestive rather than exhaust- 
ive or conclusive, will satisfy all those who 
seek after truth. 

J. C. F. Grumbine. 

Syracuse, N. V. 



\ 



EVOLUTION 

THERE is no subject which has so agitated 
the world in these latter years as that of ev- 
olution. From the time Charles Darwin's 
celebrated works "The Origin of Species" 
and "The Descent of Man" were published, 
philosophy, science and religion have been 
quite revolutionized. Every department of 
knowledge has received light, and, by the 
information which geology gives of the his- 
tory of organic and inorganic nature, we 
learn the more accurate account of the ori- 
gin, development and civilization of man. 
The rational unfolding of the history of life 
will give us a key to the economic provi- 
dences of God, and show that in the great 
sweep of universal existence, taking in all 
matter and time, there has been no inter- 
ruption of the facts and law r s of causation 

and that what has been considered the mar- 
ly) 



8 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



vellous and the supernatural is but the more 
intricate yet natural working of a great 
power, at present, perhaps, inexplicable. 

Evolution in its broad application is a fact 
of positive science and an admitted process 
of the unfolding of life. It is derived from 
the Latin words meaning to "roll out", to 
"develop", to "make something new". It 
teaches that there is at work in nature a 
power by virtue of which the imperfect and 
simple is ever unfolding into the 'perfect and 
complex, and that the succession of univers- 
al phenomena is but the workshop in which 
old and new life, in all its variety of form, 
is organized and developed. Evolution 
reveals the thought that nature begins, 
perfects but never ends her creations. It 
proves that the hills which are covered with 
petrefactions or fossils are the first fields in- 
to which came the lowest forms of life and 
in which were enacted the first tragedies of 
species or conflict for existence; and that 
the strata which have been so wisely classi- 
fied by Dana and other naturalists, mark eras 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 9 



of terrestrial and animal history, revealing 
the slow yet upward march of life, the gene- 
sis of the present world, the simple process- 
es of natural forces and the successive peri- 
ods of the formation of the mineral, the vege- 
table and the animal kingdoms. It shows 
that God, very much as a merchant, started 
out with an aim, and worked along certain 
lines of activity, making years of toil add 
something to the end in view. As a faithful 
woman at a loom works the material stuff in 
such a way, that when the last thread is used, 
the fabric will embody the aim which she had 
in mind, so the Almighty, at the great loom 
of Life, weaves the threads of purpose into 
the warp and woof of created matter and 
force, and the whole garment displays order, 
beauty and usefulness. 

Moses, as the representative name of the 
men who composed the Pentateuch, gives in 
the Bible a theory of the origin of creation 
which, when compared with the facts of life, 
seems to be highly improbable. Ecclesiasti- 
cism has defended this tradition in all ages 



10 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



and with all possible vigor. The Hebrew 
nation, with every other nation of the globe, 
originated some theory which might explain 
the beginning of things. The biblical stu- 
dent observes in his literary studies of the 
Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, 
that there is evidence of two accounts of 
things woven together so as to form a whole; 
and that the use of the words Elohim and 
Jehovim has led scholars to suppose that the 
author or compiler had in mind two current 
traditions from which he composed the gen- 
erally established biblical account. Owing 
to the uncertainty of the Mosaic origin of 
the first five books of the Bible, and the pe- 
culiar flexibility of the Hebrew language, 
(which allows a day to be stretched into an 
age and every minor detail to contain a hid- 
den meaning quite philosophical), Huxley 
adopts the Miltonic account of the creation, 
and, with good sense, examines that, be- 
cause English is a language he well under- 
stands. But out of profound friendship for 
Professor Huxley may we not say thatupru- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY II 

dential criticism is indirect, and opens a way 
for escape. The best authorities admit that 
the English version of Genesis is in thought 
identical with the Hebrew. We may ex- 
amine therefore the biblical theory without 
trespassing on the meaning and use of 
Hebrew literature. All who have made a 
profound study of the Old Testament admit 
that the author is not God. It is a fact 
amply sustained and generally allowed by 
the wisest biblical students, a fact but re- 
cently accepted by the church, that the 
bible is not authoritative as a book of sci- 
ence. Therefore all scientific theories which 
are hinted in the biblical record have no 
especial value because contained in the 
Bible. The idea of the creation elaborately 
set forth in Genesis will gain weight only as 
it is true. Now it is alleged in the Bible 
that on the first day light burst upon the 
chaotic universe. On the second the land 
was separated from the water. On the 
third the land and water were fixed and 
the vegetable life was called forth. On the 



12 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 

fourth day the stars were made, also the sun 
and the moon. On the fifth day the waters 
were filled with life, the land and air with 
winged creatures. On the sixth day the 
beasts of the field were made ar»d on the 
same day man was made in God's image. 
This is substantially the biblical theory of 
the origin of creation. 

It is not the object here to go over, item 
by item, the propositions of the argument 
of evolution, but simply to touch upon 
those settled views which furnish us the cor- 
rect history of all life — especially human 
life. Science, by an exact study of nature, 
makes these assertions: 

1. The world was not made in six days. 

2. The theory of teleology is at fault. 

3. Man was not made perfect. 

4. The law of evolution is the only law 
which will rightly explain all phenomena in 
the world. 

1. It was a theory of the church long 
since abandoned that the world, as we see 
and know it, was made in six days. It was 



E VOL UTION AND CHRISTIANITY 13 

so generally believed that the boys and girls 
of hardly fifty years ago were taught it in 
the schools. It was this theory which 
formed one of the greatest barriers to the 
growth and progress of the science of geo- 
logy) and which drove Voltaire in the 
eighteenth century to ridicule, with such 
unbridled contempt, the ignorance of the 
monastic orders. It was a bone of conten- 
tion in many councils, and a stumbling block 
whenever men made an attempt to unmask 
superstition or explain the Bible on the 
ground of probability and science. It with- 
stood until recently every attack of know- 
ledge, being vigorously endorsed by the 
Romish and many Protestant churches. 
Yet natural history modestly brought forth 
facts which gave a new direction to human 
thought. The six day theory of creation 
was abandoned as man plunged into the 
mysteries of life and found that, although 
the forces of nature have forever played 
upon the universe with undiminished and un- 
interrupted continuity, allowing of no mirac- 



14 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



ulous deluges, terrestrial or celestial antics, 
the great procession of cause and effect has 
marched onward, multiplying the simple and 
varying the complex, until we have the 
natural world to-day, teeming with so much 
startling reality of universal life and mater- 
ial wealth. There has never been a time 
when creation was completed. We could 
take the geological record and show with 
Prof. Huxley, Romanes and Darwin that the 
biblical record is sadly at fault. We could 
point out great blunders in the estimate of 
time and in the order of the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms but such proof would be 
uncalled for perhaps impertinent. 

2. We shall find yet more startling evi- 
dence as we examine briefly the theory of 
teleology. This theory, which for years was 
the prevailing view of the schools, was found 
to be untenable when it was discovered that 
every species or genus bears a close and 
almost perceptible relation to all other 
species or genera, and that the present life 
is linked with the past by an unbroken, al- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 15 



though as yet incomplete chain of causation. 
The eternity of present existencies, a doc- 
trine of some theologians, growing out of 
the theory of teleology which maintained 
that special design pervades the universe 
from a star to a sponge, and that everything 
which is grew up or appeared at once and 
like Aphrodite, fresh and perfect from the 
sea foam, falls to the ground. That there 
are final causes in the universe of life toward 
which all creation hesitatingly points, there 
can be no doubt, but that existence as we 
have it came instantly from chaos by one 
fiat of God nature most forcibly denies. 
Earthquakes and geysers, volcanoes and 
cyclones, all have modified the structure 
of the earth, producing those atmospheric 
conditions which generate and foster disease, 
yet the pages of nature, although torn and 
weather-beaten, enable us to read the cer- 
tain history of the globe. We find that 
through an unbroken plan of work God has 
wrought the wonders of terrestrial life, and 
that although heat and water as agencies have 



1 6 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



obliterated many links in the chain of phe- 
nomena and destroyed perhaps the eviden- 
ces of an absolute evolution, yet the recent 
discoveries of science have added new 
truths to the already grand array of facts. 
What the plan of God is we can hardly un- 
derstand, even though we take a perfect re- 
trospective view of the historic and un-his- 
toric past, the record of nature or the 
biblical account of eschatology or the last 
things. We may anticipate that beneath 
every disguise and seeming fate there is a 
divine event toward which the wholQ 
creation moves, and, with the poet Tenny-* 
son sing, 

"Yet I doubt not" through the ages one increasing purpose 
runs;'* 

but how our rash hopes seem to give way 
to new developments of undiscovered deity. 
So far as our knowledge of the meaning of 
creation is concerned we may forever grap- 
ple with shadows. It seems that, presume as 
we shall, boast as we may, God has inscribed 
above the very portal of life what Dante in T 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 17 



his Divina Commedia saw above the gates 
of Hell, "Abandon hope all ye who enter 
here." Yet curiosity, undiminished in the 
ages by disappointment, seems to urge man 
to study and wonder until he may know all. 
Our little systems, however, have their day 
and cease to be. Mighty words which, by 
their declarations, compelled audience and 
stood for revelations, seem unsatisfactory. 
History itself but gives us a touch of the 
garment of nature, while the thought of 
man, dazzled and bewildered as it burns in 
lofty aim and profound research, lives only 
as fossils live to point us to the inevitable. 
We may specialize the several streams of 
life, and by observing what is and what hap- 
pens, direct our being along certain lines 
of duty and law. But to know the absolute 
end of creation may never be possible. 

3. It is a matter of little concern whether 
man was placed in a garden of Eden, full 
blown' as to his intellectual and spiritual 
powers, or whether he v/as the object of the 
many providences which brought him up to 



18 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



the high and pre-eminent civilization in 
which he exists to-day, if either theory be 
proven by the very facts of history and the 
evidence of nature. The Bible gives us the 
story of our first parents, and how like a 
story it is! When we examine the tedious 
historical and natural development of man 
from barbarism and ignprance into the sub- 
lime character of Jesus, the great intellect 
of an Aristotle, a Goethe and an Emerson, 
when we realize wdiat an evolution man 
passed through from stubborn material civi- 
lization to one which happily contributed to 
the intellectual and moral life of mankind, 
when we essay to note the steps he took in 
slowly climbing the summit of being, we 
may then condemn, if we will, the so-called 
doubtful and ridiculous evolution of man 
from the mere animal, which as yet is more 
or less plunged in mystery. If as far back 
as we can go we see man, not in an increas- 
ing state of perfection, but on the contrary, 
in one of degeneracy, if we observe him 
incapable of correct articulation and speech, 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 19 

and unable to write, if we find him dealing 
with pictures as a child deals with blocks, 
if we find man, as Dr. Draper allows, a prey- 
to the circumstances and conditions of life, 
prostituted by a seeming tyranny of nature 
over which his knowledge had no control, 
what can we say of a theory which made man 
once perfect, an angel of heaven — yet physi- 
cally, intellectually and morally undeveloped 
and imperfect. It must be confessed that 
geology may never bridge the so-called 
hiatus of man's history. Granted that he 
did not make his appearance in the world 
until theQuartenary age — and this, according 
to the story in Genesis, occured about 4,000 
years B. C. — we are forced to ask whence 
came the savages whose low condition of 
life surprised so calm a mind as that of 
Charles Darwin, savages who lived in a wild 
and almost naked state amid the jungles of 
Africa as far back perhaps as 10,000 B. C. 

4. The law of evolution is then the only 
one which will rightly explain (so far as 
results are concerned) all phenomena in the 



20 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



world. In briefly summarizing the results 
of a long discussion, which to make plain, 
requires perhaps the introduction of more 
details than the reader would care to ex- 
amine, we may make these observations. 
Evolution proves, as Professor Romanes 
asserts, that since the first dawn of life in 
the occurrence of the simplest organisms, 
until the meridian splendor of life as we now 
see it, gradual advance from the general to 
the special, from the low to the high, from 
the few and simple to the many and complex, 
has been the law of organic nature. And 
although the theory of teleology is rapidly 
yielding to the great facts of natural selec- 
tion, the Creator is not in the least belittled 
but indeed magnified. We can trace, as 
is actually done by Charles Darwin, the 
complex variety of life which exists to-day 
to one birth-place, and reduce the many gen- 
era into one or a few organic forms, and know, 
that by migration, geological and atmos- 
pheric changes, and natural selection, ani- 
mals have acquired such diversity; when by 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 21 



the study of the geographical distribution of 
life, we observe that animals found on any 
specified stratum resemble or differ from 
animals found in any other stratum of the 
globe as the stratum is connected or discon- 
nected, and that the argument from geology 
verifies the presumption that the earliest 
forms of life are the simplest, showing no 
highly developed organisms; when we can 
trace the history of life through the ages 
and make the rock, mineral, fossil and 
petrefaction yield an evidence which can- 
not be gainsaid, we have some knowledge 
of the world which will give us a correct 
philosophy and a positive religion. Said 
Charles Darwin in his "Origin of Species:" 
"There is a grandeur in this view of life with 
its several powers having been originally 
breathed by the Creator into a few forms, or 
into one; and that, while the planet has gone 
cycling on according to the fixed law of 
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless 
forms most beautiful have been and are 
evolved." Evolution further proves that 



22 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



man is progressive and is, so far as we know, 
the finishing touch of the panorama of exis- 
tence. We see the error of the Bible in 
supposing that "the earth and all that is 
therein" were made in six days, and we dis- 
cern the true order of the progress and oper- 
ations of nature e It elevates the being of 
God, who was vainly supposed to be an 
insipid deity, forever changing his plans, 
and damning man first in order afterward to 
bless him, creating, recreating and destroy- 
ing, unable as was inferred to carry out his 
own plans; it elevates the being of God to 
the proper height of greatness, by making 
him the author of a universe in which there 
has never been the slightest deviation from 
the laws of natural causation, in the opera- 
tion of which there has unceasingly appeared 
a uniform and exact expression of the will 
of God. 



CHRISTIANITY 

Carlyle, in the introduction of his "Sartor 
Resartus," calls our attention to the fact 
that "to many a Royal Society the creation 
of the world is little more mysterious than 
the cooking of a dumpling; concerning 
which latter process, indeed, there have 
been minds to whom the question, 'How the 
apples were got in,' presented some difficul- 
ties." For over 1,700 years the question of 
revelation has agitated the world, and 
although some flippantly disregarded the 
subject, although many made science com- 
pare her truths to the supposed infallible 
and biblical test of all knowledge, although 
church barriers were built to defend every 
doctrine which was assumed to have had its 
origin and sanction in the Bible, although 
the cross, gibbet and stake were erected 
and the ax bared whenever a dissenter arose 
(23) 



^4 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



who tried to tear Jesus down from the 
pedestal upon which an idolatrous and sup- 
erstitious Christendom had placed him, al- 
though modern research, historical and lit- 
erary criticism, declared that Christianity, 
in its beginning and constitution, represent- 
ed a principle of righteousness, yet the 
question of an authoritative revelation, the 
question of "how the apples were got in" 
will never be settled until all prejudice and 
egotism are removed and every fact which 
can be proven to have existed or to exist is 
accepted by mankind. The question of 
Christianity has been resolved into the ques- 
tion of what is revelation. It seems to be 
the pivotal point of all religion. We shall 
try to show how far revelation can go with- 
out trespass upon the laws of causation or 
the dignity of human nature. 

In the narrow and contracted sense it 
refers to the reception of truth miraculously 
from God. It is said that the law was re- 
vealed to Moses and that the Hebrew canon 
was received by the Jews as the receptacle 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 25 

of the word spoken by Jehovah. In the 
New Testament it is the word made flesh 
or manifest in the flesh — the veritable God 
made man or the Son made human who 
lived for a brief time among the people of 
Palestine as a record of the truth, as the 
example of men, or to descend logically, as 
the means whereby man would become re- 
conciled to God, his imputed and original 
sin which he received from the first parents 
washed away, his character redeemed and 
purified, and the soul made secure for the 
next world. This is not the Bible account 
of itself but man's account of the Bible. It 
is an effort of the church to explain the 
Bible. 

In the larger or literary sense, and what 
may be conceded the biblical sense, revela- 
tion is but another name for evolution. 
Could we believe that God commanded 
Moses to appear on Mount Sinai and there, 
wrapping himself up into a concrete person- 
ality, carved with his own hand upon mar- 
ble the commandments which have formed 



26 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



the substantial beginning of the Jewish 
theocracy and of Christianity, or could we 
suppose that by some power God gathered 
up the sunbeams and made them spell out 
on the very mountain the ethical code of the 
Jewish race, or could we fancy that, in an 
ecstatic vision, while alone on the mountain, 
in the quiet of the morning hour while the 
sun was gilding the surrounding mountain 
peaks, the great laws of conduct flashed upon 
the mind of Moses, could we believe these, 
we should misrepresent the truth and vio- 
late not only every principle of historical 
criticism but also every law of intelligence. 
It is admitted by biblical students that the 
books of the Old Testament before and at 
the time of Jesus were received by the Jews 
as authoritative. The Pentateuch and other 
books of the Old Testament were not ques- 
tioned until the second and third centuries, 
when Celsus the Epicurean opposed the 
Mosaic authorship, and the Neo-Platonist 
Porphyry contended that the book of Daniel 
was not genuine. De Wette and Ewald, both 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



scholars of eminence, argue that the Penta- 
teuch in its present form is not the work of 
Moses, but was compiled by men in differ- 
ent periods of history. Ewald and Delitzsch 
almost agree with J. H. Kurtz, who main- 
tained that Moses did not compose the entire 
Pentateuch, but is the author of isolated 
passages. Some say that it was written 
during the age of Moses and Joshua, and 
others that it is the product of later years. 
With this variable difference among our 
best scholars as to the authority of the 
books in which is contained the revealed 
moral law of the Hebrew race, with the 
knowledge possessed of the genuineness and 
authenticity of the canonical writings, we 
are justified in considering the revelation, 
as formulated in the Old Testament, to be 
the result of spiritual insight into the high- 
er or psychic conditions of life. Much of 
the Jewish law which in different periods 
of its history received the sanction of the 
people as the revelation of God was aban- 
noned by Jesus. 



28 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



Revelation has stood for supersentient 
knowledge, that which may have no ex 
planation in experience. But it has been 
found that what protests so strongly against 
the natural cannot become supernatural. 
Hence the miraculous, when seen to violate 
natural law and the conditions growing out 
of it, borders on and is defined by the word 
charlatanism. Revelation as something un- 
related to brain or thought or man, having 
no origin, growth or development in con- 
sciousness, claiming authority, prima facie 
is a species of imposition. The very history 
contained in the Old and the New Testa- 
ment, when stripped of all literary accre- 
tions, foreign intellectual brag and gossip 
and imported moral exaggerations, will be 
found to hint at and even express the law of 
evolution. It will not be necessary to go 
into detail, for all who are acquainted with 
the Bible record, and who know anything 
about its authenticity and genuineness can 
follow a palpable evolution through the 
myth building and idol worship ages, ages 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



of polytheism, theism and law. We discov- 
er that the intellect which, in all ages of 
Hebrew history, blossomed forth into glow- 
ing prophesies, stern denunciation of wrong 
and hopeful encouragement of well doing, 
although mistaken for revelation are but 
the expressions of a man keenly awakened 
to the realities of truth and conscious of the 
God who works in the laws of human life. 
The ages through which Hebrew civilization 
passed were unripe for the truth which 
blossomed forth in the life and thought of 
Jesus — -a truth which was buried out of sight 
in the early, middle and after ages and re- 
asserted in the victories and triumphs of 
modern science and philosophy. Among 
every people God was dimly portrayed and 
ignorantly outlined, and even among the 
savages there are hints, rare and exceptional 
it is true, of occasions when eternity looked 
in upon time, when a good deed, or a kind 
word even, foretold the absolute freedom of 
man, his emancipation from barbarism into 
a perfect civilization. 



30 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



It has been asserted that revelation closed 
with the Bible. But moral evolution as- 
serts that other bibles may be written with 
an authority that may not be denied, founded 
upon the unflinching realities and laws of 
life, containing if not the autograph of God, 
at least a way to deity built upon the laws of 
omnipotent justice, goodness and truth. It 
has been unwisely maintained that God has 
revealed himself to us perfectly in the Bible 
and that all other evidences of his character 
are mean, untrustworthy and false. History 
shov/s that every nation is not without a 
witness of God and that his will is being un- 
folded as each age rolls into oblivion. A 
period was never put to his purposes. Step 
by step we are solving the problem of 
life, and each generation lays the foundation 
for the growth of man. As Pythagoras, 
Aristotle, Zeno and Ptolomy paved the way 
for Galileo, Copernicus and Newton, so the 
great men of every age prepare the path for 
subsequent genius. What John the Baptist 
asserted of himself society emphasizes as the 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



3* 



means whereby all progress is made. Some 
one must go before to make plain the path. 

It will be affirmed. by those who oppose 
this view that the age in which Jesus ap- 
peared was incoherently related to him and 
the religion he organized. Yet when we 
examine the conditions of the age and re- 
call the history of the relative years, when 
we penetrate the knowledge of the men of 
that day and compare it rationally with the 
knowledge of Jesus, when we remember that 
the Essenes and Greeks had developed a 
practical religion, we are more than ever 
confirmed in the belief that his philosophy 
of morality and idea of religion were suited, 
if not related, to the apparently dark panor- 
ama of historic facts which were then ex- 
hibited to the world. As a meteor, which 
flashes suddenly across the horizon and 
brilliantly lightens up a segment of the sky, 
is traceable to a planet or star which still 
revolves about some sun in the universe, so 
Jesus, although apparently isolated from 
everything which was then extant, can yet 



32 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 

be shown to have sprung out of the very- 
circumstances over which he asserted an 
imperial yet natural power. Hence this 
difference, which was emphasized as a 
serious objection to a moral evolution, in- 
cluding in its domain even Jesus, is of no 
account when made to embrace all the facts 
in the case. We argue that Jesus of the 
first century and Christ of the nineteenth 
century are different, inasmuch as the latter 
stands for Jesus idealized, but both may ever 
be the measuring line of character. The 
beautiful life of Jesus is of little value to men 
if it is the product of supernaturalism, but 
his whole history becomes at once wonder- 
ful and transcendental when it is known 
that he, like all men, wrestled with the facts 
of life and built for himself a monument 
whose towering summit kissed the stars. 
He certified by his character the opportunity 
man has to build upon the powers and 
activities of his life a kingdom in which love 
and justice wield the scepter of power. He 
proved that humanity can attain a preemi- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 33 



nent growth if it ascends by lofty activity 
the moral heights of life. His religion was 
rational. He adopted no prudential doctrine 
about God or man. He came as one having 
authority, yet his authority was based upon 
the realities of spirit. He spoke and lived 
the truth as he knew and felt it. His teach- 
ing was plain morality touched with pathos, 
made authoritative by his apprehension of 
the being of God in moral as well as 
physical law, his illustrations parable gath- 
ered from nature. His large sympathy, his 
patient endurance, his ready forgetfuiness of 
wrong, his mercy, kindness, benevolence, 
justice and love, these have made him the 
Christ of the world. It would be well to 
consider the subject of Christian evidences 
to see whether Christianity is linked with 
the natural process of character buildiug 
and the moral evolution of mankind. Is 
Christianity a departure from natural religion? 
Has it no confirmatory history in ex- 
perience? Is it a miracle? A desire to 
penetrate the mysteries of Christianity, to 



34 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



know what the New Testament really is and 
what it contains, how much in it is reality 
and how much is untruth/whether it was 
written and compiled by men or whether it 
is the autograph of God, whether it bears 
any relation to the people among whom it 
originated or is an isolated phenomenon 
thrust into the very heart of Hebrew civili- 
zation (a question which we have already 
touched upon), whether we are to look upon 
the gospels as a book in which as in the 
prophecies of the Sibyl is contained the 
destiny of man, whether we are obliged to 
accept every doctrine of Christianity as a 
genuine fact of religion, whether we are 
called upon to overlook errors in the Bible 
or make it the test of science, experience 
and knowledge will, when rightly answered, 
break up the storm which has menaced the 
world for over 1800 years. Men of learning 
declare that so far as the Old Testament is 
concerned the traditions and written mem- 
orials are quite human. It is regarded as a 
history of the Jews — showing especial pro- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 35 



gress in spiritual things as the Jew willed 
to think and live rightly. Facts can be 
multiplied to show that Paul, Peter, John 
and all the evangelists, although men en- 
dowed with fine religious consciousness and 
spiritual insight, were open to mistakes. 
The first five or six centuries of the church 
were most disastrous periods in the history 
of Christianity. It was during the early 
years, when it was taking on a positive form, 
that the Apostolic creed and other pro- 
fessions of doctrines were said to have been 
organized, and yet Mosheim in his "Insti- 
tutes cf Ecclesiastical History," endorsed by 
similar opinions from Isaac Barrow, Buddens 
and Hagenbach, affirms that the opinion so 
long held about the Apostolic Creed as be- 
Ang genuine is a mistake, having no founda- 
tion, as all who have any knowledge of 
antiquity unanimously confess. And Lam- 
son in his work on the "First Three Centur- 
ies of the Church" admits that the doctrine 
of the trinity, and Waite, that even miracles, 
the immaculate conception of Jesus and the 



36 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



doctrine of his divinity, were not known 
until the year 200 or 300 A. D. In these 
early centuries — say the first six — we have a 
record of at least sixty-five councils, among 
the most threatening and important being 
those of Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus. 
During these years Avhen the fate of Chris- 
tianity as a doctrine was to be determined 
by councils, when the very history of Jesus 
was to be composed by a tyrannical and 
dominant church, when the facts of Chris- 
tianity were to be so perverted and distorted 
as to express the bigotry and partialism of 
the church factions, when all effort on the 
part of good and wise men, even men who 
stood as prominently forth as Origen in the 
schools along the Mediteranean sea, to tell 
the truth was met with brutal antagonism, 
when the history of every skeptic and 
martyr was blotted put of existence with his 
life, when thousands fell victims to the 
cruelty, persecution and massacre of the 
church or emperors, when a general stagna- 
tion of intellect and heart brooded over the 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 37 



civilization of lower Europe, when Greece 
had tottered and her genius of literature 
and philosophy took up its abode among the 
nations farther west, w T hen Rome, filched of 
the splendor which the poets Virgil and 
Horace declared had come from Venus and 
the gods, lay prostrate like a beast, foaming 
and struggling under a weight of paganism, 
licenciousness and brutality, when the star 
of science was eclipsed at its dawn and rea- 
son was buried in oblivion, is it a wonder 
that Jesus was caricatured and his gospel 
filled with exaggeration? And it was not 
until printing was invented and more fre- 
quent commercial intercourse between na- 
tions was indulged in that the Romish 
church was deprived of her imperialism. 

Take for instance the first two centuries 
of Christianity. In those years when en- 
thusiasm was hot, when perhaps many tra- 
ditions, reliable and false accounts of the 
life of Jesus, existed, when fanaticism 
stalked the land which was made famous 
by the life and death of the Nazarene, 



38 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 

when fancy was awakened, when magicians 
and even forgers worked upon the world 
certain miracles and spurious gospels which 
further increased the zeal and excitement 
of the early Christians, a great deal of highly 
colored material would no doubt be ac- 
cepted as the genuine work of Christ. Then 
again the destruction of the Alexandrine 
library, which occured under the Saracens 
during the years extending beyond 640 A. 
D.. was a most fatal and seemingly unpar- 
donable calamity. With it were destroyed 
many literary monuments and much reli- 
gious information which would have thrown 
light upon the codices which the world to-day 
possesses, and perhaps settled all doubts 
about the life of Jesus. 

It is usually supposed that the gospels 
were written by evangelists who were eye 
witnesses of the events of Christianity, and 
that the original documents were preserved 
inviolate. Norton maintains that although 
they were known to exist in the latter part 
of the first century there is still much doubt 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 39 



as to whether they were actually written by 
eye witnesses. The peculiar character of 
many of the early fathers whose testimony 
of Jesus has been invariably accepted as 
reliable goes to depreciate as much as to 
strengthen all evidence based upon their 
writings. We are greatly indebted for much 
knowledge of the life of Jesus to Papias, 
Origen, Justin Martyr, Irenseus, Clement, 
Tertullian, yet the material which these 
fathers furnish is sometimes untrustworthy 
and very unsatisfactory. Schleiermacher ad- 
vances what is conceded to be the reason- 
able and correct explanation of the origin of 
the gospels. He argues with much force 
that the four gospels were compiled from 
manifold and fragmentary documents and 
oral traditions, and hence exaggerations, 
accretions, notes and views of the writers 
colored the real facts. All tendency to make 
Jesus cosmopolitan or ideal will meet with 
failure, but an effort to discover how much 
to accept as genuine and how to deal with 
the Christian narrative so that the mind 



V* EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



will not be bewildered as it seeks a true 
history of the origin of Christianity and the 
life of Jesus will certainly meet with favor. 
With the facts before us we learn that Jesus 
was not a God — a supposition which is al- 
most blasphemy to imagine. So far Chris- 
tian evidences assert the uniformity of the 
chain of causation, and prove by the facts 
we have carefully quoted that God never 
took exception to any law which has 
operated from time immemorial. Chris- 
tianity, therefore, instead of being a miracle 
or the product of supernaturalism, we 
may safely conclude to be the result of 
man's complete mastery of the laws and 
facts of being. It is an estimate of the 
height to which man whose incipient life has 
not been spoiled by hereditary disease, de- 
generating tendencies and voluntary sin may 
ascend. 

Christianity opens the way for the moral 
evolution of the nation and the individual. 
The one is linked with the other and both 
are interdependent. Civilization is in the line 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 41 



of intellectual and moral activity. As every 
drop of rain enlarges the volume of the rivers, 
and these in turn regulate the level of the 
oceans, so every individual conditions the 
character of a civilization. History strik- 
ingly shows that man improves in indi- 
vidual and nation, taking on variation as 
a plant or animal, a fauna or species, 
being subject to the higher power of 
being. With the increase of intelli- 
gence in organic nature, we find animals 
asserting a superior authority over phenom- 
ena. In man we find intelligence making 
him characteristic, exerting, by specialized 
functions and devices, an authority over all 
life. Every animal has qualifications suiting 
his enviroments and necessary for his condi- 
tions. God has epitomized in man his law, 
and as man lives in harmony with the mind 
of God as manifest in the laws of causation, 
as he apprehends the relation he bears to 
creation, he no longer is subject to the law 
of mere necessity, but discerns that he is a 
king over his kingdom, as a lion, in one 



42 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 

sense, realizes that by superior strength he 
is conqueror over the conquered. Man is 
differently qualified from the brute because 
he is differently made, endowed, and directed. 
Yet he is subject to all the laws to which the 
flower and the animal generally are subject. 
Having a superior intelligence and moral 
nature, possessions which the brute creation 
have in embryo, he grows upward while the 
brute creation seem fixed by an inexorable 
fate. And it is a fact well worth noticing 
that God has opened for man a future which 
all the mineral, vegetable and animal king- 
doms may condition, in which he will and 
can blossom into a perfect being. This 
Jesus foretold in his life and made emphatic 
by his teachings. It is not exceptional that 
organized man under certain periods of civi- 
lization should have towered by virtue of 
his genius or life so far above the masses as 
to appear like a god, when we remember 
that such action as the natural impulse of 
the soul is consistent with law. But should 
we see a savage with a Platonic mind or life 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



truly moral, we could justly be surprised at 
the anomaly, should we know that not only 
his associations and surroundings but also 
the hereditary genius and intelligence of 
of the tribe to which he belongs, contradict 
every possible development such as he ex- 
emplifies. It is most possible for a wise man 
to be a good man. Ignorance is the cause 
not only of error but of sin, To know the 
office of appetite, thirst, passion, natural af- 
fection, all desires, is an insight into the 
nature of being. Where such a knowledge 
is not, or where the powers of being have 
been abnormally developed or perverted, 
there we shall find disease, moral leprosy, 
social corruption, premature death. The 
growth, therefore, from savagery to civiliza- 
tion is no uncertain and misguided leap, but 
a progress tediously slow and painfully char- 
acterized by general relapses and degenera- 
tions which attend the revolutions which 
blossom forth with the intellectual and 
moral growth of man. The work of moral 
evolution, although easily read in the actions 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



or history of nations and man, is practically 
one of the individual. Men are born with 
all the functions necessary to sustain the 
physical life. In intellect and moral nature 
man reaps the harvest of physical disease. 
The brain is distorted, the moral nature 
dwarfed and man is chained down to the 
earth from which he ought to arise and soar 
toward his maker. The physical storm, 
whose fury and force is aggravated and ac- 
celerated by every abuse of natural law, 
sweeps desolately and with driving energy 
into the unsuspecting lives of the innocent, 
and families are buried ignominiously that 
otherwise might have eclipsed the glory of 
the stars. Yet this law of heredity, assert- 
ing the onmipresence of the God principle 
in life, is clearing the way for subsequent 
physical triumphs and moral victories such 
as the world has never known. It shows 
how man is free so long as he obeys natural 
law, but a captive as long as he steals one 
apple from the tree whose forbidden fruit 
should never be tasted. It points out a 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 45 

royal path for men — a path leading to an 
Eden in which the spiritual thirst will be 
slaked by the nectar of the Almighty and 
the restless life drown its sorrows in the 
lethe of infinite love. Gradually will men 
awaken to the import of God and see that 
they can by perseverance develop them- 
selves until they will be above temptation — 
beyond the dominion of sin. 



CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLU- 
TION COMPARED 

What is commonly called Darwinism is 
the first palpable proof of evolution. The 
principle of evolution becomes at once of 
great importance when we discover that so 
great a mind as Ralph Waldo Emerson ele- 
vates it to the realm of spirit and sees, not 
only that every individual man is the 
fruit which all the foregoing ages have 
formed and ripened, but also that the history 
of the genesis or the old mythology repeats 
itself in the experience of every child, and 
that to transcend the despotism of the senses, 
to awaken to the supreme realities of life, 
to open to men the continent of hope which 
reveals itself in the higher attainments of 
the mind, to work gladly in the line of duty, 
making every detail, of toil bend toward 
harmony and beauty in character, is to 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 47 



bring about the higher evolution of man- 
kind. 

Does evolution do away with the exis- 
tence of spirit? 

Spirit has usually been defined as the 
characteristic possession of man, the power 
he has to think- of God and act morally. It 
is not an independent possession as a dol- 
lar or a piece of furniture. It may be called 
personality and personality is intelligent 
consciousness. That the lower animals have a 
personality, but dimly awakened and alto- 
gether limited, few will deny. Yet when it 
is applied to man it is said to include that 
which the lower animals possess and do not 
possess. To use an illustration as an ex- 
planation, — a German philosopher said that 
he saw a dog once that followed and looked 
upon his master as if he was a god, yet we 
have no data to prove that the brute creation 
are religious. Darwin, however, declared 
that animals have a conscience — or a good 
substitute, and many experiences could be 
cited in which moral discriminations in the 



48 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



brute creation were noticed. Still there is 
a marked and colossal difference between 
man and the lower animal. The celebrated 
naturalist instances a case as showing that a 
dog has a dim notion of a higher power — a 
power out of his reach and for which he 
could not perhaps account. "I once noticed 
my dog, a full grown and sensible animal, 
lying on the lawn during a hot and still day. 
At a little distance a slight breeze occasion- 
ally moved an open parasol, which would 
have been wholly disregarded by the dog 
had any one stood near it. As it was, every 
time that the parasol slightly moved the dog 
growled fiercely and barked. He must, I 
think, have reasoned to himself in a rapid 
and unconscious manner that movement 
without any apparent cause indicated the 
presence of some strange living agent, and 
that no stranger had a right to be on his 
territory." Among animals most relative to 
man we find a suggestion, in the physical 
outline as well as in the general mental 
character, of the human prototype. It is 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



49 



impossible to say at what point or when man 
became man, nor would such a hair-splitting 
nicety be at all necessary. Although the 
difficulty arises when we remember that 
nothing can be evolved which was not first 
involved, nothing can be in the effect which 
was not first in the cause, it is most certain- 
ly removed when we observe that although 
natural selection cannot account for many 
isolated existences, yet we can justly infer 
that the foundation which the Almighty 
carefully laid in the ages in the animal 
kingdom was a sufficient basis for the ad- 
vent, development and perfection of man, 
and that, out of this great repository of liv- 
ing functions and breathing individualities, 
by evolution, God fashioned or made this 
masterpiece we call man. It is not for us to 
decide how quickly or how perfectly God 
could make any type of life, nor whether he 
would or could violate the very laws which 
condition the regularity, order and stability 
of the universe. But, observing carefully 
the phenomena and laws in nature, our duty 



5o EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



seems to be to seek for the principle of their 
organism, growth, variety and endowment. 
We might expand here the idea of God, and 
show by actual fact that the exalted notion 
we have of deity is linked with this concep- 
tion of spiritual agencies which forms so 
large a part of the early savage worship, 
and which constituted the primary religious 
notion out of which grew the polytheism 
and monotheism of eastern and western 
nations. It is a trite argument, by no 
means exploded, that the existence of God 
is an intuition of the soul, and yet there is 
every reason to believe that the develop- 
ment of the idea was associated with certain 
intellectual states of civilization, and that it 
grew into unique and special prominence as 
man understood more of himself and his 
enviroment. Hence, J. S. Mill accounts for 
it by the law of association. It was asserted 
by theology that the intuitive possession of 
this idea characterized us from the lower 
animal, yet we shall find that it was not in- 
serted into human consciousness as an in- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



tuition necessarily, or an exceptional en- 
dowment, having no bearing in the circum- 
ference of cause and effect, but it came as 
all thought comes, as all ideas come. Nat- 
uralists recice instances where savages have 
not the least conception of God, where 
intelligence had not developed sufficiently to 
reason out of self into the circumstance of 
being; and creation. Wonderful as it may 
seem, doubtful as it may appear, stupen- 
dous as it may become, the thought is 
tenable that the idea of God, — if we can 
lay claim to the existence of the idea at 
all very much — as the desire for sex, is 
part and parcel of the mysterious yet 
valuable inheritance which man received 
as a legacy from animal ancestry; yet which 
revealed itself in such wide and crude forms, 
as doctrines of spiritual agencies, fetichism, 
polytheism and theism, that philosophers 
have supposed that either man was origin- 
ally made perfect, unrelated to other crea- 
tions, or that his horizon was lit by no star 
of hope, that he was compelled to grapple 



52 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



with a fate as cruel as the hot sun which 
prostrated him with a fever, or the wild 
beast that ravished his offspring, until he 
developed sufficient courage to master the 
circumstances which held him down to bar- 
barism and absolute cannibalism; that God 
left him alone with nature to work out his 
higher civilization, never so much as dis- 
turbing the sky by his awful and infinite pre- 
sence, never appearing to him in a burning 
bush, never confounding his language, never 
following or leading him in an exceptional or 
miraculous way, never thundering his con- 
tempt at him for his crime, or flashing his 
indignation for his disobedience, but giving 
him material enough by which he might 
grow — marvellous as it may appear — into 
the sublimest character that ever graced the 
earth, It is a fact worthy of notice that 
there was a condition of the human race 
when savage men did not even think of 
marriage, when polygamy and monogamy 
as moral ideas were undreamed of, and when 
a rank inter-mingling of men and women, 



E VOL UTION AND CHRISTIANITY 53 



growing out of a license which was the 
result of ignorance about nature and the 
moral law, fostered a low state of civilization 
and foreshadowed, even in its corruption, the 
necessity of a milder treatment of human 
life, and of a coercion which would, by 
social and then civil and then moral legisla- 
tion, adjust the principle of cohabitation to 
a law of justice. It is said that among such 
a people there was no development of the 
idea of God. We find the idea assuming an 
abstract and concrete form whenever the 
savage took upon himself a form of charact- 
eristic intelligence and civilization. Inher- 
ent in man was the power to apprehend God, 
yet naturally we find man far down in the 
scale of being, seemingly incapable of a 
destiny higher than that which was un- 
folded in the life of his progenitors, and only 
developing himself by social intercourse and 
the exercise of his intellectual and moral 
powers into a civilized being. 

The idea of God, even though it can be 
shown to have undergone so many develop- 



54 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 

ments, cannot in the least be made to prove 
that, as an original endowment of man, it 
makes intelligence in the brute mean some- 
thing less than intelligence in man. With 
new organic functions come new powers, or 
larger and finer developed powers, and, 
while in the horse and dog and monkey we 
find much intellect and a crude outline of 
the moral nature, in man, with his higher 
organized body as a whole, we see the in- 
tellect and moral nature full fledged and 
perfectly equipped for the destiny which lies 
before him. If we allow that man is divine 
and the brute is mere materialism, we shall 
be made to confront the problem of life and 
explain whether life is the finer thread of 
matter or the spasmodic breath of a cruel 
fate. 

The question of spirit is rid of its per- 
plexity when it is remembered that every 
variety of life, from a plant which is incap- 
able of choice and protoplasm which de- 
veloped the lowest form of volition, to the 
most perfect organized being, has a form of 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 55 



intelligence. Evolution shows that God has 
somehow insinuated his mind into life, mani- 
festing itself most visibly and potently in 
man. We come to believe that every liv- 
ing thing is an individuality. Wherever 
there is life there is spirit — there is God. I 
can see how at this point one could easily 
drift into pantheism, yet there is an alterna- 
tive which is more rational and probable. I 
do not say that organic nature is an emana- 
tion from God, nor do I affirm that it is a 
part of God. Each organism is a thought 
of God projected in time and space. Yet it 
is a thought of God premeditated in the 
first creation out of which came universal 
existence. 

It would be well to consider the subject 
of an immortality and see whether this pos- 
tulate, which Christianity so ardently and 
essentially sets forth, is discarded by evolu- 
tion. Science has shown that life or spirit 
must be accounted for as well as mere 
mechanical force or lifeless matter. We 
shall not indulge in extravagant metaphors. 



56 E VOL UTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



It is a generous and oeeanic theme well 
calculated to arouse the imagination and 
excite the deepest affections of the heart. 
It has furnished solace for those who have 
burned at the stake. It gives hope to many 
who despair, and as a ministering angel it 
sits by the bedside of the dying, breathing a 
strange yet a beautiful song of triumph into 
the life drifting slowly out into that "sea 
which rolls round all the world. " In the midst 
of the storms of life, when the heart feels a 
lingering weakness, and we would gladly 
hail one gleam of sunshine bursting through 
the darkness and the clouds which envelop 
our path, or hearken to the whisper of the 
infinite, if we could but distinguish it from 
the thunder which roars remorsefully into 
our lonely life, immortality chides us for our 
infidelity and bids us await with patience the 
time when the former things will pass away 
and God may dry all tears from our eyes. 
As a belief it sustains three- fourths of hu- 
manity in the midst of care, sorrow and dis- 
appointment, and we may wisely examine 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 57 



its relation to evolution, which denies, as 
many ignorantly imagine, its probability or 
existence. 

Will man be buried as the fossil, decay as 
a tree, leaving hardly a visible trace of ex- 
istence behind? Will he become as extinct 
as many missing links in the realm of organic 
life? We must account for all life or grant 
a peculiar constituent to life in the form of 
man, or there will be a sad break in the 
chain of facts, the column of existence will 
stand mouldering in incompleteness, the 
whole scheme of organic life will prove a 
snare and a delusion, the evidences of ani- 
mal history will point us to mysteries yet 
more marvellous and perplexing, the secur- 
ity of all morality will fall as "the baseless 
fabric of a vision." Christianity will have 
no interpretation, meaning and authority in 
consciousness, and will prove to be but a 
Will of the Wisp of the mind, mocking us at 
death, throwing us remorselessly back upon 
a naked and powerless nature, and the uni- 



58 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



verse itself, as Byron described it, will, in- 
deed, become, 

"The pall of a past world.' ' 

It was theology that once affirmed that im- 
mortality was a gift of God to the righteous, 
and yet this very doctrine, exclusive and un- 
scientific as it was, failed to explain, with any 
degree of satisfaction, the problem of con- 
tinued existence. It was a doctrine as nar- 
row as the church which formulated it, per- 
meating the mind of a people lost to reason 
and absorbed in gross superstition, witch- 
craft, alchemy and all manner of error. 
With the rise of modern philosophy bold yet 
possible notions of immortality came into 
prominence, and Comte advanced what 
seemed to be not only a novel, but an at- 
tractive, yet impersonal view of the idea. 
The philosophy of John Stuart Mill and 
Herbert Spencer gave an impetus to un- 
bridled and speculative reasoning, and the 
tendency of utilitarianism and synthetic phil- 
osophy has been toward a disorganization of 
morality and an abandoment of the idea 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 59 



of immortality. We have reason to be- 
lieve that life in every organized form 
may have two bearings — one in ma- 
terial, the other in immaterial existence. 
As we view the subject in this light 
what a tremendous scope it gives to life and 
how the possibilities of man widen as one 
reaches down and up the great perpendicu- 
lar of growth and civilization. We hesitate 
to affirm whether the vegetable or animal 
kingdoms will be deprived of a future life — 
for though there is much truth, or at least 
probability, in the assertion that man seems 
to be the only one destined to be immortal, 
yet we declare that spirit, in every variety 
of personality and organism, may yet sub- 
serve in the beyond a higher purpose for 
disembodied man — a purpose which was 
prudently suggested in the plant and the 
animal in this world. I see no reason for 
supposing that man alone, without his con- 
comitant animal and vegetable enviroment, 
will continue to live, while the horse or dog 
or flower will disorganize into the elements^ 



6c EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



leaving no trace of the life which made them 
characteristic. On the contrary the theory 
that all spirit must be accounted for is sup- 
ported by the facts of biology. I realize 
what a stretch of the imagination it requires 
to conceive of so marvelous a thing, yet 
where will we begin to discriminate if we 
discrimimate at all. Man should not ap- 
pear so important as to make all other life 
lose its value. We are driven to this con- 
clusion by the very nature of things, and we 
seek repose in the belief because it slights 
no form of life. 

We have not theorized on the condition 
or state of man in the next world. It is not 
within the province of this work to discuss 
the results of sin and its effect upon man, 
nor to engage in the futile controversy about 
rewards and punishments in the hereafter, 
but only to show, as I hope we have shown, 
the relation which evolution sustains to 
Christianity as postulating the idea of im- 
mortality. 

The facts of Christianity, as advocated by 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 61 



Jesus and not as taught by the church, are 
perfectly harmonized to this law of evolution 
when we remember that they show that 
Jesus developed his lofty character, not by 
a violation of any law of life, but on the 
contrary, by an adjustment to the conditions 
and laws which operate to make men live 
righteously. It will be readily seen that I 
give to man the power to evolve out of him- 
self what may indeed so far as we know 
prove to be the end for which he was 
created. We have noticed how forms in the 
lower ranks of created life were linked with 
still lower and lower forms e We have ob- 
served how the path of intelligence or of 
personality in the animal kingdom was 
environed and circumscribed by a law of 
necessity. Yet there are evidences to prove 
that animals developed certain powers by 
use and gained new characteristics by change 
of food, water or climate. Man had a wider 
control over his activities, becoming more 
completely the master of life, as he ap- 
prehended most perfectly the conditions for 



62 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



the safety of being and made himself cap- 
able of overcoming all opposition. God 
seems to have woven into the very vitality 
or type-producing function of nature, a 
thread of association by which every living 
organism which fulfills or fails to fulfill its 
mission or carry out the embryonic aim, al- 
ways contributes a steady supply of material 
for the unfolding of an original plan. Now 
if Christianity as taught by Jesus means 
anything, and I assert it means more than 
we sometimes allow, it certifies that specifi- 
cally there is a moral evolution by no means 
clashing with the physical or the merely 
intellectual, nor violating any law of natural 
cansation. And it appears that the aim of 
human life is not simply to receive, possess 
and forever retain happiness, but to acquire 
wisdom and virtue, to unfold or train all our 
powers, acquiring, as a sequence but not as 
an end, happiness. Human life seems to be 
a discipline — a hard and uncompromising 
conclusion to arrive at, yet a discipline not 
without its exhilarations, trials, defeats, vie- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 63 

tories, pains and pleasures. Jesus appre- 
hended three conditions of life to which if 
we properly adjust ourselves we shall be 
perfect. We understand these conditions to 
be the physical, intellectual and spiritual or 
moral. The meaning of his teaching was to 
adjust life to the inevitable. We can no 
more live righteously by thwarting the will 
of God as expressed in these conditions than 
the lily can thrive in the snows of the Alps. 
"Consider the lilies of the field, " he said, 
"they toil not, neither do they spin, and 
yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his 
glory was not arrayed like one of these." 
He here meant that a lily perfectly adapted 
to the soil and enviroment is an illustration 
which, by inference, should teach man that 
God would have us live as we ought, choos- 
ing the proper conditions for the blossoming 
forth of our life. Christianity, in its simpli- 
city, rid of all interpolation and exaggera- 
tion, emphasized the law of consequences. 
We find Jesus making himself at home in 
nature, selecting his lessons from the com- 



64 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



mon scenes and facts of nature. Morally he 
felt the significance of the law of compensa- 
tion or justice, yet he noticed how love 
could harmonize the "I am" with God. 
Blessedness is the state of the righteous. 
To be good he declared was the end of 
human life — to do the will of God the sum- 
mum bouum. Now as gravity permeates the 
realm of physical being, so justice operates 
in the moral province of our nature. Justice 
demands that we pay dollar for dollar, not 
with a view to be cruel but to show that God 
is immutable. Hence all sin — wilful viola- 
tion of the moral law can — only be deprived 
of its sting after just reparation is made. 
Consequences in the moral as in the physical 
world cannot be separated from causes. 
Remorse as surely follows unrighteousness 
as the thunder follows the lightning. Nor 
is this fact without evidence. No eyes see 
the thief as readily as his own. No dagger 
pierces the murderer's heart so painfully as 
the one which the moral law uses to com- 
pensate her victims. No cage is so confin- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 65 



ing as the world in which the felon tries to 
find safety and peace. The truth is that 
God is a law in the moral as well as in the 
physical life of mankind. Take the beati- 
tudes and many of the parables, and how 
they harmonize with the working of the 
moral law. 

Nor did he overlook or slight the fact that 
a healthly body is a condition for a perfect 
moral character. The work of Jesus was 
sanitary as well as ethical. The small brains 
inbedded in hard and stubborn skulls, large 
intellects in badly constructed or cared for 
physical constitutions, nervous temperaments 
in frail organisms, are the conditions of dis- 
ease. Feeble limbs, palsied hands, the un- 
certain pulsations of the heart, the rheuma- 
tism, the gout, blood diseases, and the mul- 
titude "of ills which flesh is heir to," come 
about chiefly by abuse. He urged man to 
regard the use of all his powers, knowing 
that abuse would precipitate life in all man- 
ner of trouble, disaster and prostitution. He 
would have man act with special view to 



66 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



moral ends. What difference would it make? 
said the idler and sensualist to Jesus. He 
showed them a palpable difference by recit- 
ing to them a parable. "Therefore, whoso- 
ever heareth these sayings of mine and 
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise 
man, that built his house upon a rock: and 
the rain descended, and the floods came, and 
the winds blew, and beat upon that house; 
and it fell not; for it was founded upon a 
rock. And every one that heareth these 
sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall 
be likened to a foolish man that built his 
house upon the sand: and the rain descended, 
and the floods came, and the winds blew, and 
beat upon that house; and it fell, and great 
was the fall of it." He patiently labored to 
show man how necessary it was to live right- 
eously would he live happily. The pessim- 
ism of Schopenhauer receives a rebuke when 
we realize that the aim of law is not to tyr- 
annize over man but to direct his activities 
for his good. 

Jesus never took exception to natural law. 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 67 



He likened God to a father, but he would 
not have us idolize him — make a mental 
image of him. The anthropomorphic con- 
ception of deity is a travesty of God, yet it 
adapted itself readily to the oriental and 
occidental mind, because man is a slave 
to the external, the pictorial, the con- 
crete. What license Jesus gave to the 
name we can only know by his teach- 
ing. Yet when we remember that his 
teaching and life are not miracles, we have a 
right to affirm that he gave us a conception 
of God which will prove to be natural, ra- 
tional and consistent with law. He taught 
that God is mindful of us. He not only 
watches the fall of a sparrow, allegorically 
speaking, but numbers every hair of our 
head. His law is one for the firm beach and 
one for the ever-tossing wave, one for the 
rolling orb, the falling star and the con- 
stellation, one for all animal and one for 
vegetable life, one indeed for all creation. 
This respect he had for law is seen when we 
examine the idea of prayer. It will be ob- 



68 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



served that he was a servant to the will of 
God. 

Take the subject of prayer and notice how 
Jesus used it. 

The irreverent and irrational use of prayer, 
the contradictions which form the essential 
characteristics of prayer, the disregard of 
men for the laws of natural causation and the 
desire that their prayers should be answered 
at the risk of universal order, have awakened 
many to the fact that doubtless the world 
prays too much or does it thoughtlessly, 
with little knowledge of how far a prayer 
will go. The misapprehensions which grow 
out of falsely interpreted language of the 
Bible have had the effect to degrade the 
office of prayer. It has undergone such 
degradation that we find men praying for 
fair or rainy weather and for all manner of 
material things. Is God open to rebuke or 
criticism? Emerson thought that there could 
be no supernaturalism which could jar the 
natural. Prayer does not with Jesus pre- 
suppose a miracle. It is not selfish. It is 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 69 



not given for cheap ends. It is not an effort 
to make man gigantic even though deity be 
thwarted. It does not drag God from the 
throne of immutable, imperial and loving 
law. Said Jesus in the garden of Gethsem- 
ane, when justice was warring with disinter- 
ested love and goodness in his heart, when 
if at any time, he needed most the immedi- 
ate presence of God as protector at his side 
to rebuke with omnipotent rage his slander- 
ing and brutal enemies, — said he in this hour 
of agony and self-renunciation — "Thy will, 
not mine, O God, be done." It was a spirit- 
ual desire that God or law should not be 
undervalued or sacrificed, but that all sever- 
ity, cruelty, all travail of the soul could and 
would be endured that universal good might 
be advanced, that the will of God might be 
unbroken. He did not feel that God could 
although he would not help him; he did not 
suppose that he disregarded the cry of hu- 
humanity as the wind heeds not the pitiful 
wail of an abandoned babe in the street, he 
did not question the everlasting love of the 



70 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 

Infinite, but he knew, as we have tried to 
show, that we are the architects of our for- 
tune or misfortune, that to live for a truth 
in an age of political imperialism, intellect- 
ual and moral degeneracy, meant, awful as 
it may seem, isolation, brutal treatment, 
even death on a cross. And so he lifted 
himself serenely above the general weak- 
nesses and timidities into which ignorant 
humanity relapses in hours of severe trial 
and agony, and, as Socrates drank the 
poisoned hemlock fearlessly, so Jesus nobly 
suffered martyrdom, and with a life anchored 
in the goodness of God triumphantly said, 
"Father into thy hands I commend my spirit." 
This is the regard he had for God, and he 
never allowed himself to be cheated out of 
the truth that the world in which he lived 
was a good world — a world in which there 
are laws which if obeyed will bless life. 



CONCLUSION 

SUCH a multitude of questions suggest 
themselves as I attempt to end a contro- 
versy which, to make brief and simple, re- 
quired the omission of much detail, that I 
feel almost persuaded not to drop the pen. 
Bnt I have simply made a study and I leave 
the reader to draw his inferences, expand 
the suggestions and carry out the argument 
into its many ramifications. I have tried to 
be impartial and truthful; yet it may be 
that I have plunged the subject into more 
obscurity. I have sought to prove or at 
least hint that the law of evolution pervades 
eTery department of life, rising in import- 
ance in the realm of the human spirit where 
the moral law and the moral nature reveal 
themselves in no disguise, and showing that 
man, although restrained by physical con- 
ditions, is qualified by natural endowment 
(70 



72 EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



to evolve out of himself a being perfectly 
adapted to the will of God. I have tried to 
make due allowance for hereditary tenden- 
cies. Nor have I overlooked the artificial 
conditions which surround human life. The 
idea of materialism is the off-shoot of a 
wrong conception of evolution candidly 
acknowledged by the advocates of Darwin- 
ism. Christianity has been seen to be the 
natural result of an obedience to the will of 
God as expressed in the laws of causation 
and life. Jesus fulfilled the idea that every 
child born into the world may be a Messiah. 
He demonstrated that we come into exist- 
ence with god-like capabilities, with noble 
possibilities which can be developed into 
great realities of genius and commodity, 
with activities which, if properly directed, 
although polluted by results of sin, will lead 
man grandly forward toward perfection. 
Our hope in God and man grows stronger 
as we contemplate life as the result of an 
evolution, ever upward, ever natural, ever 
harmonious with law. We find that evolu- 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 



73 



tion instead of dragging "the white throne 
of deity into the mire of atheism'' reveals 
the truth that there is a God. It does not 
slap us on the face saying, "Go to, you are 
dust." It does not unblushingly tear up the 
flowers and toss them at the sun, saying, 
"These are but mockeries." It takes us up 
to the highest being that exists and shows 
from the very beginning that the thesis of 
natural history is a beautiful production, 
having aim, order and intelligence. It 
masses together the facts to express God. 
It arrays arguments to defend God. In the 
realm of religion it shows that man is moral, 
drinking in the glory of infinite love, and it 
seeks to explain and thereby to exalt relig- 
ion, by showing that God was never pro- 
voked at man or so incensed as to drive him 
out of the very paradise into which he came. 
It aims a blow at every form of theology 
which perverts truth and strikes the rock 
and brings forth the fossil, saying these 
things antedate every creed. Christianity 
as a name for the highest development and 



. 74 EVOLUTION- AND CHRISTIANITY 



realization of the moral sentiment and not 
as a series of dogmas, or a revelation inco- 
herently related to truth and at war with 
reason, as a principle elevating man and 
making him obedient to the laws of life, is 
not only one with natural religion but is 
also its probable fulfillment. A religion 
which has not morals for its fundamental 
basis is conditioned to annihilation. It will 
decay as rapidly as it grew and flourished, 
because, like certain plants, it cannot thrive 
in a soil unnaturally qualified for its exist- 
ence. We are not, therefore, without the 
assurance that the efficacy of Christianity 
will be seen, if it is not seen already, in the 
joyful yielding of man to the will of God, and 
that the evolution of man along the line of 
civilization will be hastened or retarded just 
as humanity makes up its mind to live 
obedient to the laws of life. Granted that 
we cannot explain every phenomenon of life 
or verify every claim of evolution; granted 
that we cannot absolutely fathom the "Un- 
knowable;" we shall yet do a mighty work 



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 75 

for man, if we build up a civilization which, 
although free of all trace of superstition, yet 
will be the result of doing what is right even 
because it is expedient, and fulfilling the in- 
junctions of morality by living, if not as we 
ought, at least as we must, remembering 
that "virtue is its own reward." It matters 
not how we think, the thought of God has 
anticipated our wantoness, and the condi- 
tions for our physical health, intellectual 
growth, moral life were issued at our birth. 
The world will do well if it never forgets 
that Jesus is the friend of all those who covet 
truth, love, virtue, and try to make their life 
mean the most for God. 



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